Not every dog can travel to Paris and dine in the best restaurants. Nor perhaps would every dog want to. But every dog should be able to enjoy a good life, chain and cage free, abuse free, a life of walks, good food, and joy.
     For this reason and to this end, let us all support our local shelters, be it by donating money or by volunteering. We can also encourage others not to buy from backyard breeders or pet stores who almost unanimously support puppy mills and other abusive practices.
     I also ask you dog-lovers to extend your love and compassion to all animals, particularly farm animals who lead the most atrocious lives of all. Factory farming kills over 9 billion animals per year. But it is not their deaths that are so horrific, rather their lives. Factory farm animals never know one good day. How can we help them? Choosing a vegetarian diet is one way. But if that doesn’t suit, then buy meat locally from small farms where you can see the animals roaming around. An animal allowed to be what he is supposed to be is generally a happy animal. But the conditions of cows in overcrowded, filthy feed lots, or pigs crammed into cages so small they are unable to move and go mad from frustration, boredom and stress, are not natural. The poultry industry is perhaps the worst of all, and no legislature exists to protect these birds. Anyone who has ever known a chicken or cow or pig or mouse or rat, individually, knows that these animals have feelings and emotions just like our dogs and cats. A chicken will lovingly lay her head across your arm and enjoy being pet.
    Talk to people, but if, out of years of conditioning, they turn a deaf ear towards you when you bring up the plight of animals, try another tactic. Farm animals are pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and fed manure and junk food. It’s no surprise that we’re becoming resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, making major pandemics inevitable. It’s no surprise that we have obesity in children due to the quantities of growth hormones they're ingesting in meat. It’s no surprise girls are not only menstruating at ages nine and ten, but developing breast cancer at earlier ages as well. Again, all due to the estrogens consumed in meat. If this is not bad enough, we are polluting our water sources by the run-off from factory farms with antibiotics, hormones, and waste by the tons.
    Let’s also be aware if we support or buy goods from companies that test on animals. Laboratory animals lead miserable, scared and often very painful lives, some never once feeling the outdoor air or seeing the sun. It doesn’t have to be like this. Sophisticated research methods, such as computer models, cell cultures, and human clinical and epidemiological studies are more accurate, less expensive and less time-consuming than animal experiments. Yet between 60 - 100 million animals still suffer each year because special interest groups (those who supply the cages, or breed the animals, the drug companies themselves) have a stake in their suffering. And we the tax payers foot the bill. Ninety-two out of every 100 drugs that pass animal tests fail in clinical trials in people, and in the U.S. alone, more than 100,000 human deaths occur by drugs that were successful on animals. By becoming aware, we can begin to change this. Talk to people and let's see the end of unnecessary animal testing, and perhaps save more human lives in the process.
     Let’s be the change we wish to see.

One hundred percent of profits from Lauren’s Story is donated to animal welfare organizations. These are Lauren's biggest recipients:

In Defense of Animals - Defends rights, welfare and habitats of animals. Works to end animal
abuse and exploitation around the world. www.idausa.org

Farm Sanctuary - Helps animals rescued from factory farms. www.farmsanctuary.org

Caring for Creatures, Palmyra, Virgina www.caringforcreatures.com

Almost Home Pet Adoption, Nelson County SPCA, Lovingston, Virginia. www.nelsonspca.org

Great quotations by great people

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals
are treated. —Mohandas Gandhi

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. —Immanuel Kant

Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called
medical research. —George Bernard Shaw

If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. —St. Francis of Assisi

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. —Hippocrates

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. —Thomas Edison

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being. —Abraham Lincoln

The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those
unfortunate slaves---the animals. —John Stuart Mill

To reassure one’s conscience, it is said that fish do not feel pain. Of course, such claims are completely without foundation. —Jacques Cousteau

For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same: as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts;... All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth? —Ecclesiastes 3: 19-21

Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. —Dr. Albert Schweitzer

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. —Leonardo da Vinci

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. —Anatole France

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals. —Henry David Thoreau

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. —Dr. Albert Schweitzer

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. —Charles Darwin

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. —Albert Einstein

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring. It was peace. —Milan Kundera

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers is contained in the dog. —Milan Kundera